


Xenia

by sergeant_angel



Series: the way home [1]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, I'm not sure how that happened, Lemon Cakes, gendry get the hearts out of your eyes you have work to do, i NEED arya teaching people how to be water dancers, i need it, the requisite gendry/arya reunion fic, the strange seduction of lemon cake, this is pretty schmoopy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 20:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11905479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sergeant_angel/pseuds/sergeant_angel
Summary: Gendry never really thought he'd see Arya Stark again. He'd hoped for it, certainly, but never thought it would actually happen.





	Xenia

**Author's Note:**

> xenia is the ancient greek concept of hospitality  
> I feel like we're not going to get an arya/anyone else reunion this season so this is how I'm working through my feelings about it

"Dancing master!" Jon calls out to the group practicing in the yard. Beginning fighters, the King had said. Trained by one of the best swordsmen he knows. 

The person leading the drills flows like water, the slim blade he holds seeming an extension of his arm, thin as a-- 

"Needle," Gendry breathes before he can stop the word.  

Arya.  

He'd known she was here, heard her name mentioned since they returned from Eastwatch, but he'd never known how to find her, or if he _should_ , if she'd even remember him.  

She's just returned home. That had been the only thing she'd wanted, when they'd been traveling together. To be home at Winterfell with her family. It's taken her so long to do it, and intruding on it seems wrong, somehow. 

These are the things Gendry told himself. He's certain most of them aren't true, and he is just as certain he's mostly a coward. At the end of the day, they're just excuses, like the ones he told himself every time he could have brought Arya up to Jon, from the moment they met at Dragonstone. He had been afraid to ask, afraid of the answer. It had been Clegane who had saved him, an offhand remark about a little wolf and Gendry can still remember the way a smile broke over Jon's face, like the sun chasing away clouds. Something in Gendry's chest loosened the day he found out Arya Stark was still alive. 

"Arya!" Jon calls again, striding towards his sister, pulling Gendry in his wake. "I want you to meet our new armorer. This is Robert Baratheon's son--" 

"Bastard son," Gendry interrupts, something that makes him want to smack himself in the face after he's said it. Robert Baratheon only had two supposedly trueborn sons, and they are dead, what else would a son of Robert Baratheon's be but a bastard? 

"Bastard son," Jon amends as Arya finally turns towards him. "This is--" 

"Gendry?" Arya looks at him in wonder, looks at him the same way he feels.  

She's faster than he remembers, to him in a flash, staring up at him. Years have passed and she's still so short. Her hair is longer, brushing her shoulders now, pulled back to stay out of her face, the brown carrying more red than he remembers. There's an ease in the way she stands—casual, but alert, as if nothing could take her by surprise. Less like the hunted, and more like the hunter.  

Her eyes, though--those are just as he remembers. The color of cold steel. He used to see her eyes in the weapons he made in King's Landing, in every sword he made for every Lannister man. Grey steel like sad grey eyes in a sad girl and her words echoing in his head,  _I can be your family, don't call me m'lady, you're practicing for a fight, you should practice right_. Every swing of the hammer was practice, he had realized. He'd made his warhammer and it had stopped steel eyes from haunting him. 

"Hello," he says, because he can't manage a thought more coherent than that. All the times he's thought about what would happen if he saw her again, all the ways he'd imagined it would go and the things he would say—he was always much more well-spoken and witty than just hello. It's his own fault; he'd imagined what he would say but how he thought he'd feel is nothing like how he actually feels in this moment. Gendry feels like he's on fire—no, it's the North, he feels like he's freezing, every nerve in his body singing because Arya is here, Arya is alive, and Arya is _looking at him_ \-- 

One of her hands reaches up to cup his cheek, her thumb brushing at his stubble—gods, if he'd known that today was the day he'd have neatened himself up a bit.  

Then she's pinching the skin at his jaw, a sharp tug with narrowed eyes. 

"Seven hells, Arry! What was that for?" 

"She does that," Jon Snow, King in the North, doesn't even bother to hide his laugh. 

"You can never be too careful," Arya snaps, though Gendry isn't sure if it's at him or her brother. "Sometimes people wear faces that aren't theirs." 

"Whatever you say, m'lady," Gendry says with a half-bow. Even he's not sure if it's to break the tension or to draw Arya's attention away from her brother and back to him. 

"Oi! Don't call me _m_ _'_ _lady_!" She gives him a shove that sends Gendry reeling back a few feet, laughing.  

"No, wait, you're a proper princess now, since your brother's the king. Should I be calling you _your highness_ instead?" 

Arya hauls him close by his collar and he's still laughing, expecting another shove and enjoying every minute of it. It was the second shove that did him in when they were both younger—the second one that knocked him to the ground, when he'd known she was different; when other things in his heart moved aside to make a place for her. 

"You're so _stupid_ ," Arya snaps, rolling her eyes. 

The shove Gendry expects never comes; Arya uses her grip on his jerkin to drag him down into a hug that is fierce and tight and nothing he expected but everything he imagined. 

"Sorry, m'lady," he murmurs against the skin of her neck, where is face is pressed. "I'll try to be less stupid, if it please m'lady." 

"Oh, shut up," she tells him. It's unconvincing. There's no heat in her words, no ice, no venom. 

Not to mention that she has her hand at the back of his head, absently carding through the short strands of his hair. Gendry wonders, distantly, if she's aware of what her hands are doing, before deciding he doesn't care and pulling her closer. He could be very happy, holding Arya forever, except for the fact that his spine feels like it's about to break. There is also a very deliberate cough next to them, which is when Gendry remembers Jon Snow, a man who has died and been brought back to life, a former man of the Night's Watch, King in the North, is Arya's older brother, is armed, and standing right next to them. 

"So," Jon Snow says when Arya finally releases Gendry and he blinks against the sun reflecting off the snow. "It seems you two know each other?" 

* * *

 

It's hotter than the seven hells in the armory, even in the North. There's a comfort in that, Gendry supposes, that some things are the same wherever you go. He's going to be late to eat, and Jon had asked him to sit at the King's table tonight, and he'll be even later if he goes and cleans up-- 

"You missed dinner." 

Gendry feels like his skin's gone flying into the air without the rest of him, swinging a red-hot blade in the direction of the speaker.  

"Gods, Arya, how'd you get in here so quiet?" 

Arya shrugs from her seat on an anvil.  

"Right, well," now that he's not focused on the work in front of him, Gendry can tell how late it's gotten, the inky blue of the night sky visible through one of the high windows in the forge. "Damn. I got--" he shrugs, shakes his head at himself, "distracted by what I was doing." 

"Don't worry about it. Eat with Jon tomorrow night, he'll understand. He knows you're busy with the dragonglass and everything else you have to do on top of that." Arya is looking at him in a way that makes him feel like everything under his skin is humming.

Gendry never thought you could taste ice on a breeze, but you can, and the one that comes in through the walls makes him shiver, sweat cooling on him now that he's no longer next to the flames and swinging his hammer.  

Arya quirks an eyebrow at him, and that's when he finally realizes that he's in front of a highborn— _a princess_ —Arya--covered in soot and sweat and not wearing a shirt.  

"My apologies, m'lady," he feels his face flush as he scrambles for his clothes, shirt and jerkin and cloak to guard against the wind.  

"Don't call me m'lady," Arya's response is as comfortable as it is familiar, and it calms Gendry in a way he didn't know he needed calming. "If you're nice, I'll let you eat the food I brought." 

"Hot pie?" 

"No," Arya sighs. "I think we should got get him from that inn, though. The cook here isn't nearly as good as he is." 

Gendry sits next to Arya, trying to make himself smaller so he fits next to her. "So, Princess Arya of Winterfell, how do I get this food you claim to have brought?" 

"I told you to be nice." 

"I'm being nice! All polite, calling you princess--" 

That earns him a shove to his shoulder and an indignant growl from Arya that warms him from his toes.  

"I thought you'd like my lordly manners." 

Arya stares at him as she reaches into the bag she's brought, pulling out a loaf of bread. She keeps her eyes on Gendry's as she rips a hunk of it off and shoves it in her mouth, chewing as loudly as possible.  

"Come on, Arya, don't let me starve," Gendry protests, reaching around her and over her as she keeps the loaf just out of his reach, her free hand on his chest to keep him pinned in place. 

She's stronger than she used to be. 

Gendry stops pressing against her hand, sits back. Arya eyes him with suspicion, but he folds his hands in his lap and stares at her. "Arya," he says, plaintively.  

She relents, tearing off a hunk of the bread and offering it to him. 

Before he can overthink his next move, Gendry circles two fingers around her wrist, drawing her hand up to his mouth, pulling the bread from her fingers with his teeth.  

The way Arya's breath catches is probably one of the best sounds he's ever heard in his life. He feels the smirk crossing his face but can't do anything to stop it. 

Arya just ignores him in favor of handing him the rest of the food she's brought: chicken with skin all crisp and crackled, remnants of a honey glaze dripping down his fingers, a chunk of a hard, crumbly cheese, and spiced wine. 

Gendry protests when he sees Arya pull off a bit of chicken. 

"Honestly, Gendry, I brought you a _whole_ chicken. You can spare a bit." 

They glare at each other for a bit. Arya laughs first. "Go on, eat." 

It feels so familiar, tearing into food in front of a fire with Arya next to him. It makes Gendry lightheaded that they've traveled so far and changed so much and have come back around to this.  

He's full and warm and the side of his leg is pressed against Arya's and the thought of doing something stupid flits in the back of his mind like a bird. Kiss her, take her hand, all different types of bad ideas.

"There's one more thing," Arya draws his attention back to her. She's unlacing her jerkin and the top bit of her shirt and Gendry's brain sparks like hot metal hit with a hammer. His tongue is too big, filling his mouth uselessly, unable to form any coherent words. 

Arya draws something small and round and yellow from under her shirt and offers it to him on an outstretched hand. "Here. Don't tell Sansa." 

Gendry's mind is still traveling down what is clearly the incorrect path but he's having trouble finding his way back. "What?" 

"It's a lemon cake, Sansa's favorite. I thought you might like it so I nicked it while she wasn't looking. Take it." She waves it in front of him.  

Gendry tries not to dwell on the image of Arya's fingers undoing laces, pulling himself back to what's happening right now. He does as she says, taking the small cake from her hand and biting into it. Lemon explodes sharp and sweet across his tongue, and the cake against his lips is warm from Arya's skin. He wonders if her skin tastes like lemon, if he could find the place she'd been hiding it. 

The thought consumes him for a moment and he can barely feel the food in his mouth as he stares at Arya. 

He half-expects her to huff, or roll her eyes, or snap " _what?"_ at him.  

All he gets is a murmured, "you're _stupid_ ," before Arya has a hand at the back of his head, swinging her leg across his lap so that his hips are bracketed by her knees.  

"Are you going to kiss me, Gendry, or should I--" 

Gendry kisses her.  

Part of him is wondering _how do you kiss a princess?_ Gently, he imagines. Like she's made of glass. 

Fortunately, the part that's in control of his mouth has a few ideas about how to go about kissing _Arya Stark._  

Gendry bites at her lower lip, catching Arya's breathless laugh in his mouth. She tastes like honey and peppers and nothing at all, her tongue against his and her teeth tugging at his lower lip, her nose bumping against his. Her nails scratch against his scalp, and he's almost certain if his hair were longer she'd be pulling at it.  

Gendry loses track of time as his hands grip Arya's hips, as he pulls away from her mouth so he can trail his lips down her neck and lick at her breastbone.  

"What are you doing?" Arya laughs, cradling his head with both hands.  

It's just as he suspected.  

 _Lemons_.

**Author's Note:**

> sansa's already planning the wedding tbh


End file.
